The methods people use to make purchases have evolved over the past 10-15 years, primarily due to the exponential growth of Internet-based commerce. It is a natural and logical progression to recognize that, with this change in how consumers purchase goods and services, your sales approach should also be analyzed and modified accordingly.
The main difference the Internet has made in inbound sales is the amount of information now readily available to buyers. A wealth of pertinent research on their next purchase is just a click away. In short, the roles of the buyer and seller have almost completely changed positions. Let’s explore the subject of the inbound sale (the online buyer’s journey) in detail, and how it should be used to shape your business’s sales process.
Understand Your Customer’s “Journey”
Before the Internet, salespeople built their processes around their own needs and wants rather than those of their customers. Now the roles are reversed. The salesperson needs to better understand the buyer and what they’re looking for in their next purchase.
A typical online buyer’s journey from start to finish when purchasing a product consists of three primary phases: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. Each of these three phases is summarized below:
Phase #1 | Awareness:
In this initial stage of the online buyer’s journey, customers identify a need or goal they are trying to address before deciding whether to take immediate action to resolve it or achieve it. It’s helpful to remember that every customer has a multitude of other needs and goals competing for their attention. This is why understanding your customer’s words is important to your ability to create content that helps them stay focused on resolving their current need or goal and on the benefits they will experience in doing so.
Phase #2 | Consideration:
In this middle step of the online buyer’s journey, your potential customer has isolated their need or goal and decided to resolve it. During this phase, your potential customer searches for information to support their decision and considers the options and solutions available to satisfy their need or reach their goal. This is when providing your potential customer with the right kind of product and service information is most critical to building their trust and preference for purchasing from you.
Phase #3 | Decision:
This is the final step of the online buyer’s journey, where the sale is either made or lost. Your potential customer has decided on the type of purchase they need to make and is ready to buy (hopefully from you), and the transaction is either completed or abandoned. Shopping cart abandonment can occur for many preventable reasons, including a lack of transaction options, last-minute surprise costs, difficulty navigating through your point-of-sale system, field errors, or a lack of visible security assurances. When you consider the work it takes to attract a potential customer and earn their trust to make a purchase from you, losing them at the point of sale is a costly issue that requires careful, urgent analysis.
Formulate a Sales Process Contingent on the Online Buyer’s Journey
The first step in understanding your online buyer’s journey is to take the time to understand your customer by carefully creating buyer personas using data from research and past customer interactions. The more you know about your potential customers, the better you’ll be able to understand the needs and desires that drive their purchasing behaviours.
After you have gained a thorough understanding of your potential customer’s journey, building a sales process around it is the next order of business. In the past, traditional sales teams formulated this process first, but that is not the case with the role reversal we’ve covered. Inbound sales teams must first fully understand their customers’ wants and needs, then act accordingly. In the process, salespeople and their customers develop a better relationship than in the past model, where the two parties were often at odds. The result is better customer retention and repeat transactions.
Making the Sale
Given that much of the power in the sales process has shifted, the inbound salesperson serves as a guide, answering any questions the customer may have about the product or service before purchasing. This doesn’t mean the salesperson’s role is diminished; far from it. Instead, a more productive, meaningful relationship develops between the salesperson and the customer since the customer is bound to feel better about the process.
Beyond the Sale
The Inbound sales process shouldn’t end following the sale. A key tactic here is to make a point of engaging your satisfied customer. This can be done in several ways, including conspicuously displayed social media share buttons and carefully timed prompts asking your customer to leave a review, sign up for new product announcements, or share what they love about their new purchase via their own social media platforms. This is where traditional sales and inbound sales are similar. What company would not want a happy customer to spread positive word-of-mouth advertising about their brand?
The good news is that, with the ubiquity and speed of social media, it takes far less time for a satisfied customer to share with their friends and family what a great experience they had with your company! Including a strong post-sale follow-up strategy will help keep your customers coming back to you when they have another need that you can resolve.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us. McAllister Marketing is a full-service marketing company that specializes in digital marketing and customer acquisition and retention strategies.
